It's All in How you Play the Game
by luvscharlie
Summary: Ron learns that Wizard's Chess is not a game for the faint-hearted. It takes a certain strength of constitution to play the game, and sometimes losing is the sweetest kind of victory. Ron/Hermione


_It's All in How You Play the Game (or what you wear when doing so) by luvscharlie_

* * *

_"There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win."_ – Elie Wiesel

* * *

The three of them sat at the table in the kitchen of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, where they had been going over the plans for hours. Tomorrow they would attempt to infiltrate the Ministry of Magic in search of the locket in Umbridge's possession. Everything must go as planned… _exactly_ as planned.

"Okay, let's go over it once more," said Hermione.

"No, Hermione," said Harry. We've gone over it and over it. No more! I'm tired. I don't want to do this anymore."

"But Harry, we must. Nothing can go wrong tomorrow."

"Of course it _can_, Hermione. Everything _can_ go wrong tomorrow. You've laid it all out, down to the finest detail. You've forced us to go over it too many bloody times to count already. We know our parts. We could recite them in our sleep. I think I did last night. We've done all we can to assure this goes well. Nothing more we do tonight is going to make a difference."

Hermione refused to back down despite the stubborn set of Harry's jaw, which indicated he, too, had no intention of indulging Hermione's request, if one could call it that, to go over the plan yet again.

The tension between Harry and Hermione was growing with every passing second. Neither showed any indication that he or she was willing to concede. Ron watched the tension build to near exploding before stepping in to alleviate it as best he could. "Harry, want to play a game of chess?" Ron asked. He pulled his old, worn chess set from Hermione's beaded bag.

"No thanks, Ron. I just want to go to bed, mate." Harry's jaw set had not softened, but his tone was one Ron recognised as a strained attempt at politeness, though it was absent its customary warmth.

Ron nodded as Harry stood and headed up the stairs.

He watched Hermione from his position directly across the table. She was scared, though she hid it well. Most would not suspect, given her tone and demeanor, that the young witch was fearful. It was only from years of observation, memorising her every gesture that Ron recognised the emotion. She was adept at hiding her feelings from the two of them, never wanting them to see her as soft or weak.

Too many years of loving her, albeit from a distance, made it impossible for her to hide her fear from him. He knew her inside and out. She had overcome the habit of biting her fingernails when she was twelve. She only reverted to her childhood habit now when she was truly terrified. Tonight he wagered there was little left that could actually be termed a nail. Hermione scared was a rarity in and of itself. Ron had never met a witch with more courage than _his_ Hermione.

Though he had learned to recognise the signs of her fear, he never knew what to say to assuage it. In fact, he most often said exactly the wrong thing, earning him the full brunt of her temper. Today, he opted to remain silent for fear of doing just that. He began to put away the chess pieces he had dumped onto the table in silence.

"I'll play with you, if you want."

"Come again? You hate to play Wizard Chess, Hermione. Don't you always say it's barbaric?"

"I mean, if you don't want to, Ron, it's—never you mind. I'll just turn in for the night, since you don't want…" Her words trailed off and she cast her eyes to the floor.

He was confused. She hated playing chess with him and would usually only agree to do so after much whinging on his part that no one else would play and about how he needed the practice. "I didn't mean that I didn't want you to--you really want to play?"

She nodded her head, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. "Mind if I shower first?"

Ron shook his head, still a bit befuddled by her behaviour. "Um, no. I could use one m'self. How 'bout you take the shower upstairs and I'll take the one downstairs, then we can meet back here. What do you say?"

Hermione smiled timidly at him, a flush breaking out across her cheeks as she shuffled from the room with a quietly spoken 'okay'.

Kreacher stopped her before she could reach the stairwell. "Miss would like Kreacher to make a nice Treacle Tart, no?" asked the house-elf, whose attitude towards them had changed so drastically over the past weeks.

"Only if you want to, Kreacher," answered Ron.

Hermione bestowed a smile upon him for his response that shot a jolt of something warm through his body and raised bumps on his flesh as a shiver shot down his spine. He wondered how one could feel so warm, yet shiver uncontrollably all at the same time.

Kreacher set about humming as he made the dessert. "It will be ready when master and miss gets back," Kreacher said as he continued to hum happily off key.

* * *

Ron showered quickly and dressed in a pair of pyjama pants and a white t-shirt that was too small for him, and clung tightly to the muscles which had become much more defined in the past year.

He was first to reach the kitchen, and he padded to the table with bare feet and still damp hair to begin setting up the chessboard. Ron smiled, noticing the tart Kreacher had left for them on the counter along with two already poured glasses of milk. With the chess pieces lined up in their rightful spots, Ron stood and brought the tart and milk over to the table. He had just taken a too-large bite of the sweet treat when Hermione entered the room.

He sucked in his breath at the sight of her running a hairbrush through her wet curls. But, her hair was not what held his attention. Hermione was wearing a short slip of a nightgown, cream in color, and cut low in front, the hem barely reaching mid-thigh. He was grateful that the table concealed his quickly hardening cock from her view as the thin material of his pyjama bottoms would do little to disguise it.

"Ready for me?" she asked.

Blimey, yes, he was ready for her. Ready to do things to her he had dreamed of doing many, many times… "Hm?" he asked in a voice much higher pitched than his normal timbre.

"Are you ready to play?"

Yes, he was bleedin' ready to play. Where should he start? Playing with her tits? Yes, he had dreamed of that many times, and without a bra they were bouncing in the most inviting way as she came toward him.

She giggled and leaned across the table to swipe at the corner of his mouth with her thumb, and he wasn't sure what kept his hands from reaching up to pull her across the table and onto his lap. The thought of Hermione astride his lap was something he had dreamed on many an occasion. When he looked down his hands were, of their own accord, reaching toward her waist. He disguised the action by reaching for his glass of milk with one hand and his tart with the other.

She popped her thumb into her mouth, sucking off the sticky sweetness that she had removed from his face, and Ron thought he heard an audible whimper escape from his throat. He couldn't recall a time his cock had ever been so hard. One really should not try and drink their milk and whimper at the same time. It caused one to choke and milk to shoot out of one's nostril in a most unflattering way. It also caused the object of one's affection to giggle and point.

"Who goes first?" Hermione asked, sitting down across the chessboard from him and attempting to stifle the fit of giggles his milk-spewing incident had caused.

"Huh?" Did she seriously expect him to play chess with her dressed as she was? She was a terrible player, and he was certain he could still beat her (well almost certain), but he no longer had the desire to play chess. _To play?_ Yes, he most desired to play. Chess? He wasn't even sure he remembered how. It seemed at that moment he was incapable of thought and even the most basic and routine abilities, such as talking at this very moment, had left him.

Did she think of him as nothing more than a brother? Was that why she thought it was okay to dress that way in front of him? Did she simply not see him as a man? The thought was crushing to his already fragile self-confidence.

"Ron, I asked who goes first."

"I heard you," he spit out. "White always goes first." The words came out a bit more hatefully than he'd intended, but he wanted—no, he _needed_ her to see him as more than the boy she'd befriended when they were eleven.

"Oh, well I suppose that's me," she said. She instructed her white pawn where she wished it to move.

Ron followed suit, barking his command at the black pawn and trying to not look at the girl sitting across from him. After several more turns, he gave up trying not to stare. How was he supposed to look anywhere but at her when she was dressed like that? The gown was just sheer enough, so that— Fuck! Were those—Gods, they were. The dark areolas of her nipples could be seen through the sheer material when she leaned forward and the material was drawn tight across her chest. He successfully swallowed down the groan that rose up in his throat.

However, when she pulled her leg up so that her foot touched the seat of her chair, and bringing her knee up so as to rest her chin upon it, and wrapping her arms around the leg to hold it in place he lost all ability to hold back. A tiny groan was out of his mouth before he could stop it. If she just moved her other leg a tiny bit more to the right, he would have a completely unobstructed view of her—Mother of Merlin, his bollocks were going to explode before the game was half over. His cock pulsed intensely begging to be touched.

He wondered what colour knickers she was wearing, and almost groaned aloud once more at the thought. He had to stop thinking this way if he expected to survive the night. Unfortunately, it seemed that his brain was no longer under his command. His hormones had taken over, and he wondered if she was wearing knickers at all. The second groan escaped his lips despite his best efforts to stifle it.

"You okay?" Hermione asked. "That's the second time I've heard you do that."

"Yeah," he said through gritted teeth. Bloody fuckin' hell! No, he was not okay. Not at all. He was anything but okay. If his cock didn't get some relief soon, it was likely to explode.

"Are you sure? You look really pale." She stood from her chair and leaned over the table to press a hand to his forehead, as his Mum would have done to see if he had a fever as a child.

There was only so much a bloke could withstand. He pushed her hand away roughly. "Stop it, Hermione."

"Stop what, Ron?"

"Bloody touching me," he shouted. The anger in his voice surprised him. She flinched in response to his shouting.

"I'm sorry," she said moving away from him, lip trembling.

She instructed her queen to move in a trembling voice, said "checkmate" and attempted to retreat from the room as tears filled her eyes.

"Oi?!" She had never beaten him at chess before. She was pants at it, and normally he would have been able to beat her without concentrating at all.

He felt instantly guilty for shouting at her. After all, it wasn't her fault she still thought of him as no more than a friend, or perhaps something of a brother, who should have been unaffected by the sexy slip of a gown.

His many years of playing Quidditch with his brothers had honed his reflexes, and as she attempted to dart around him, he grabbed her upper arms, pinning her between his body and the hard wood of the table. "Hermione, wait! Don't go."

He had only meant to keep her there to talk to her, to prevent her from being angry with him, but being pressed so closely against her was intoxicating. Before he knew what had come over him, his head was tilting just so and his lips were mere inches from hers--

"You two mind holding it down?" Harry shouted from up the stairs.

Ron's attention was diverted for a moment, but that was all that was required. She slid around him and bolted from the room. He heard her slam an upstairs door and pounded his fists against the wood of the table. How did he always manage to bugger things up so badly? Well, he couldn't let things remain like this between them.

Ron reached the door and raised his hand to knock before changing his mind and opening the door, walking in, and closing it smartly behind him. She must not have heard him enter. She was lying on the bed, the almost-nothing-silky-nightgown bunched around her hips. The knickers that had been the subject of his thoughts and fantasies only moments before were now in plain view.

He tried to take a deep breath to steady the racing of his pulse. He thought of every unpleasant thing one could possibly think in an attempt to control the raging hard that throbbed and ached with need for her. Nothing worked. In fact, he anticipated that he would simply implode into a smoldering heap of fiery ash at any moment.

Despite his best efforts, his mind traveled places that were not conducive to remedying his raging erection, at least not in a way that did not involve a warm female body or a romantic evening with his right hand. His mind slipped into fantasy, and he wondered what her reaction would be if he walked over to the bed, pushed her legs apart and settled himself between them. Would she moan her appreciation when he shoved aside those lace-trimmed, pristine, white knickers and tasted her? Would she arch her back when he slipped a finger inside her silky softness? Would two fingers make her eyes widen in surprise or would she require more?

The ideas sent his pulse racing and stood his cock at even greater attention, but he had no doubt that she would hex his bits off were he to try it. And still he wondered…

"Hermione, I'm sorry I shouted at you."

"It's fine. You don't have to apologise. Just go, okay." She was crying quietly and each word was followed with an audible sniff.

"Look at me, Hermione. I do have to apologise because—"

"You don't have to apologise for not wanting me, Ron."

He guffawed loudly. She must be joking. She couldn't possibly think he didn't—Could she? Really? "Apologise for _not_ wanting you? Is that what you—"

She cut him off. "I know that men like rather large—" She held her hands out far in front of her chest.

Ron sniggered at how ridiculous she looked with her hands at least two feet in front of her. He couldn't stop himself from mocking her. "Wow! You had best be putting on some weight. I think I'll get you another piece of that tart."

She glared at him. "What are you going on about? So now you think I'm too thin as well?"

He was somewhat ashamed that she seemed wounded by the words…not ashamed enough, however, to cease the teasing. It was rare he got one up on her, and he found that he rather liked it. "Well, if you plan on having a set of tits that large, you're going to need something to balance out the weight, or else you'll likely tip right over."

He covered his hand with his mouth in what he hoped appeared a studious pose, despite its real function to cover his smile.

"Tip over? Tip—What—I mean—Tip over?" She was flustered and the broken words she spoke made little sense.

He crossed the room and moved to sit beside her on the bed. However, it appeared that she had recovered herself more than he realised because her foot shot out and connected hard with his arse. "OW!"

"Serves you right, you prat!"

Ron caught her ankle before she could withdraw it. Touching her was a mistake if he wanted to alleviate the hardness of his erection. Unfortunately, he didn't realise how large a mistake it was until he was actually touching her warm, soft skin. His hands were large, and he could wrap his entire hand around her small ankle with ease, and did so.

"This is ridiculous, you know?" He wasn't sure how he managed to choke the words out around the lump in this throat. Then and there he resolved to tell her…tell her everything. They might die tomorrow, after all, and she deserved to know. He needed for her to know.

"What is ridiculous, Ronald?"

He summoned every ounce of Gryffindor courage he possessed. "The notion that I might not want you when I can't remember a time I didn't…want you that is."

She was visibly taken aback by his blatant honesty, but in true Hermione-like fashion, she recovered her voice quickly enough. "You don't have to say that."

Ron was still holding her ankle in his grasp and pressed his erection against the sole of her foot. "I'm not just saying it. I mean it…every word."

"Oh!" She was startled by the feel of his hardness against her, but recovered her voice quickly enough. "What about Lavender? I mean last year—What I mean is—If you've always wanted me—"

"I don't think I've ever seen you at such a loss for words, Hermione." He moved forward, closing the gap between them. The hand that had held her ankle moved up her calf and over her knee as he spoke, pressing her leg firmly against his hip as he moved forward. "Lavender Brown was a mistake. I wanted to make you jealous, and in the end I only wound up making a huge mess of things. I am sorry, and not just to you. I hurt Lavender. I used her and she didn't deserve that. Nobody does. I'm not proud of what I did, but it was a mistake. Say you forgive me, Hermione… please." By the time he finished his words his hand had worked its way up her thigh and he was standing between her legs. The inside of the thigh he was holding was pressed firmly against him, and he rubbed circles with the pad of his thumb over skin softer than any he had ever touched.

She looked up at him from her prone position on the bed. "I—Ron, I mean—"

Ron smiled again at her flustered attempt at forming words. He hadn't thought he would ever see the day when Hermione Granger was unable to speak a coherent sentence. He shifted a bit and his erection pushed against the inside of her thigh. She groaned a response and tossed her head back, eyes closed and hands clenching the duvet.

"Yes," she gasped. Her breathing came in short pants. "Forgiven." The word was barely audible as it slipped past her lips, and had he not been so close he wouldn't have heard it.

Ron's experience was limited. He was not prepared for this and unsure what he should do next. The scant experience he had to draw from was of little use to him here. Lavender had been a capable teacher in some respects, but she had always taken the lead and he was certain that Hermione would not. He was at a loss, unsure of what he should do next. What if he went too far? What if he was misreading the signals? The voices in his head seemed at war with one another.

_Neither of you may live past tomorrow._ True. He agreed with that voice. This, he decided, was a voice he liked.

_You may both live and she'll never speak to you again. You'll lose the years you've worked towards this and you'll never get a chance to fix it. Stupid. Just stupid, if you ask me._ He hadn't. This voice he didn't particularly care for, yet it had pointed out his deepest fear. He didn't want to ruin this. He had worked to hard to get them to this point.

_What's he supposed to do?_ one voice seemed to ask the other. _There's a half-naked girl lying on the bed, moaning beneath him; and not just any girl—a girl he's wanted for as long as he can remember. What would you have him do? Just walk away?_ Exactly. What was he to do? Yes, he definitely liked this voice best.

The other voice retorted. _I would have him act a gentleman and--_

He'd heard enough. "Shut your gobs!"

Hermione looked confusedly up at him. "What did you say?"

Ron shook his head. Had he said that aloud? A look at Hermione told him that yes, in fact, he had. "Nothing. Just talking to myself, I guess." She must think him daft.

She raised up, wrapped her arms around him and whispered, her breath warm against his ear, "I don't want to die tomorrow not knowing what this is like." He could feel her trembling and her voice was thick with fear. "I want you. I want this with you, Ron."

He nodded, drawing on her words for the confidence he, himself, lacked. He pushed her gently back on the bed and followed her down kissing her with trepidation, careful to rest most of his body weight on his elbows.

Hermione, however, it seemed had made up her mind that this was what she wanted and she lacked patience with his timid kisses. He pulled back to look into her face and she locked her hands behind his neck and pulled his head down hard to her. He, unfortunately, had not expected this and her action so surprised him that their teeth clanked together and their noses collided painfully. Ron tasted blood as his teeth clamped down on his tongue. Such was the pain that Ron forgot his precarious position above her, lost his balance and the full weight of his body slammed hard against her expelling her breath in a large gush, as her knee made sharp, painful contact with his groin.

"Get off me," Hermione choked out. "I can't breathe, Ron."

Neither could he. Did she not think he would have already moved if he had been able? He was dying. Had she no sympathy? He groaned a reply that even he did not understand, as he attempted to roll off of her. With the aide of her hands shoving him, he was finally able to make the adjustment and rolled to his side facing her.

He felt her hand on his cheek when the pain subsided and he looked up into her face as she sat beside him on the bed. He was unable to read her expression.

"Well, that didn't go very well, did it?" she said in the prissy tone he knew so well.

"No." He was embarrassed—no mortified was probably a more accurate description of how he felt about this.

Hermione seemed to take no notice and prattled on. "I can't say I'm speaking from experience or anything, but I don't think this was the way it was supposed to—"

"Hermione!" He cut off her words with the sharpness of his tone.

"Yes, Ron?"

"Stop talking. You're not helping." Merlin, how did he always manage to bugger things up?

"But it's just that I've done a lot of reading on the matter, and I'm quite certain that this—"

"HERMIONE!" He rolled to his back and threw an arm across his face in complete and utter humiliation.

"Honestly, Ron. There's no need to shout. I was only going to say that since that didn't go so well, perhaps we should start with this."

He felt her hand slide beneath the waistband of his pyjama bottoms as she began to caress him, slowly at first, but with growing confidence as she felt him harden beneath her touch.

"Yes," he gasped. "Perhaps we should."

* * *

Their lovemaking was awkward at best; at worst, it was fraught with fumbling hands and sloppy, wet kisses and his all too eager attempts to make it something for her that simply was not to be. It was surprising, really, the degree to which two bodies were required to respond to one another during lovemaking; to move in a rhythm simpatico one with the other. This would require practice and lots of it. He, for one, was up for the challenge.

They now had even more motivation to live past tomorrow. Perhaps, he thought, they should make a game of chess a nightly routine. He doubted he would mind, even in the slightest, if she became so good at the game she beat him every night.

It is mostly true what he had always heard: it is really of no consequence whether you win or lose, it only mattered how you played the game…or rather what one wore when doing so. That was Ron's final thought as he drifted to sleep with Hermione tucked safely in his arms.

They did not know what tomorrow would bring, or even if there would be a place in this world for them the day after that, but they were together and that was enough…at least for tonight.


End file.
